"Secretiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... restaurant or attend so public a function as grand opera with a person of the opposite sex, seemed to him a singularly harmless choice of indiscretions, and had she made a careless avowal of her intention the matter would probably have dropped at the moment from his thoughts. But the very secretiveness of her manner—the suggestion of a hidden motive which dwelt in her nervous movements and even quivered in the little scintillating aigrette on her blonde head—aroused in him if not a positive distrust, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... something in college life which fosters a reticence that is almost secretiveness; and this becomes a code, a religion; yet Stewart found himself seized with an intense longing to confide in someone. And at that moment, from under the wide archway leading into the quadrangle, appeared the Master of Durham. The Master was in cap and gown, and carried ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... a sudden rush of blood. "Peter hates to have any one else know a thing before he does!" Alix explained this later. But he went to them quickly, and shook hands with Martin, and was presently reproaching Cherry for her secretiveness in his old, or almost his ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... such a little fool as to suppose I intended to stand on the back of a street-car all my life, were you? Five years of that sort of thing is about enough for me, and I 've worked it for all it was worth." A desire to impress her overcame his innate secretiveness. "There 's more in that job than the measly salary the company pays; and a man 's entitled to take something of what would be his by rights if things were as they should be in this world. There 's a higher law than the law made by the privileged few for their own enriching, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... from childhood, although singularly attractive, of a moody, fitful, unrestful nature,—eager, earnest, but unsteady,—with varying phases of imprudent frankness and of the most stubborn and unfathomable secretiveness. He was a creature of unreasoning antipathies and attractions. As Zephaniah Pennel said of him, he was as full of hitches as an old bureau drawer. His peculiar beauty, and a certain electrical power of attraction, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... humorousness, love of fun, neighborliness, love of frontier life, love of travel and of adventure. The same may be said of immoral traits, such as criminality, pauperism, delinquency, irascibility, lying, truancy, superstition, clannishness, secretiveness, despondency, slyness, exclusiveness, vanity, cunning, cruelty, quickness to anger, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... I. Preston has assured me that the success of our efforts to run the leaders of this gang to ground—he tells me he is sure there is a gang working together and playing into one another's hands very cleverly—will largely depend upon our discreetness and our secretiveness, also upon our tact and our knowledge of when to act. So not a word, mind; not a syllable even to ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... with anxiety Johnny threw himself in Uncle Ben's way. But here occurred one of those surprising inconsistencies known only to children. As Uncle Ben turned his small gray eyes upon him in a half astonished, half questioning manner, the potent spirit of childish secretiveness suddenly took possession of the boy. Wild horses could not now have torn from him that question which only a moment before was on ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... sirens' house were, somehow, connected. He was sure that Gaspare either knew or suspected what had happened, yet meant to conceal his knowledge despite his obvious hatred for the fisherman. Was the boy's reason for this strange caution, this strange secretiveness, akin to his—Artois's—desire? Was the boy trying to protect his padrona or the memory of his padrone? ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... that he did not realize that practically every word he had spoken had reached the ears of the three in hiding and that his final precaution as he divulged the information to the girl was prompted by an excess of timidity and secretiveness. ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... must have had to say, and who had even possibly given her a delicate lead. But the lead had never been taken. One lady had even remarked that, on her part, she felt that a too great reserve verged upon secretiveness, which was not a ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... It spreads, too, as specks in a garnered fruit. We are startled by seeing it in children by the time they can lisp a lie, and we note in them, with a sickening at heart, the father's or grandfather's tendency to secretiveness or deceit, or the mother's penchant for false excuses. We can scarcely bequeath a greater sorrow to our offspring than to curse them before their birth with this hereditary taint, which is, perhaps, one of the hardest of all evils to ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... one, for although lightened at times by the readiness of the Indians to impart their knowledge, it more often required days and weeks of patient endeavor before my assistants and I succeeded in overcoming the deep-rooted superstition, conservatism, and secretiveness so characteristic of primitive people, who are ever loath to afford a glimpse of their inner life to those who are not of their own. Once the confidence of the Indians gained, the way led gradually through the difficulties, but long and serious study was necessary ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... distance. It was not a place—it was something on the map. Perhaps she had never imaginatively realized that actual people did in fact go to South Africa. "But this is the first I have heard of this!" she said. Julian's extraordinary secretiveness always disturbed her. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... dark gray as the hair. The most cursory observer could not but recognize power and character in the head; yet one would scarcely have guessed it to be the power of a poet, the character of a prophet. Misled, perhaps, by the ribbon at the buttonhole, and by an expression of reserve, almost of secretiveness, in the lines of the tight-shut mouth, one would rather have supposed one's self face to face with an eminent statesman ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... incensed—and Mr. F. E. Smith, now Lord Birkenhead, who was head of the Press Bureau, came to see me that evening, and was outspoken as to the absurdity of this sort of thing. The matter did not, however, rest in my hands. The secretiveness in connection with reverses and contretemps which prevailed at that time, and which continued to prevail during the first year and a half of the war—during the very period when I had certain responsibilities in connection with such matters myself—seemed to me then, and seems to me now, to ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... things were said of Buestom, but not half that could have been told and yet save one's reputation for veracity and secretiveness. Among the things he could not keep were his word and servants. Not even would a Chinaman attend his many wants. His last effort was a big Manchu from northern China; and he had no more than been installed and began ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... sheep-dogs interested Pete. They seemed so alert, and yet so quietly satisfied with their lot. The last thing the old Mexican did was to ask for a few cartridges. Pete did not understand just what kind he wanted. With a secretiveness which thrilled Pete clear to the toes, the old herder, in the shadowy rear of the store, drew a heavy six-shooter from under his arm and passed it stealthily to Pete, who recognized the caliber and found cartridges for it. Pete's manner was equally stealthy. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... dear old Gracious, but if you should say secretiveness, I might be willing to stop," said Kate, boldly, yet hardly daring to ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... among the few friends who knew her intimately. But it was not in her nature to open her heart to any one; her large organ of "secretiveness" was her bane; she knew it and deplored it; it was the origin of that misconception which embittered her whole life, the mainspring of that calumny which made fame a mockery and glory a deceit. But I may say, that, when slander was busiest with her reputation, we had the best means to confute ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... was, of course, a poor, faint simulacrum, compared with Scott's. He lacked knowledge, leisure, friends, long life—everything that was needed to give his work solidity. All that he had was a creative, though undisciplined imagination, together with an astonishing industry, persistence, and secretiveness. Yet with all his disadvantages, his work, with all its imperfections, is far more striking than the imitative verse of the Wartons, or the thin, diffused medievalism of Walpole and Clara Reeve. It is the product of a more original mind and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... experienced old doctor did not believe a word of it. At the same time, however, he was aware that it was quite useless to press his interrogatory further, his knowledge of women being that there is no measuring the length, breadth, and depth of woman's secretiveness. He therefore consulted M. Belmont. From him he learned that an observable change for the worse in Pauline's manner was coincident with the young American officer's departure from his house, and even dated back from ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... clear. It's all part of the secretiveness of men. They tell one nothing and then they're offended if we don't anticipate all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... his own letters. He seemed to be interested in the conversation of these ladies. He was not a reserved man, but a secretive, which is quite a different thing. Reserve is natural—it comes unbidden, and often unwelcome. Secretiveness is born of circumstances. Some men find it imperative to cultivate it, although their soul revolts within them. In professional or social matters it is often merely an expediency—in some cases ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... Witherspoon's departure had changed the frank young fellow into a taciturn man of feline secretiveness. The discovery of Worthington's treachery, the knowledge of the dogging spies at his heels, had been a suddenly transforming influence. He now ardently burned for the return of his one confidant, for the annual election was but ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... in the grey evening of a grey day, had a stark and sinister aspect, an atmosphere of mystery and secretiveness, an air of solitary aloofness in the dreary marshes, standing half shrouded in the night mists which were sluggishly crawling across the oozing flats from the sea. It was not a place where people ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... know anything about the locality, disposition, or secretiveness of this here Black Bill,' says he, in a severe dialect, 'you are amiable to the law ...
— Options • O. Henry
... native houses and courtyards, which therefore survive in all their original, inconceivable squalor—squalor so uncompromising that it has long ago ceased to be picturesque. What glimpses into humble interiors, when native secretiveness has not raised a rampart of earthen bricks at the inside of the entrance! In the daytime it is like looking into vast, abandoned pigsties, fantastically encumbered with palm-logs, Roman building-blocks and rubbish-heaps which display the accumulated filth of generations—there is hardly a level ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... pitfalls who manage a friendly interview as a general would manage a campaign; and if they make their demonstration first, we are placed upon our guard. We unconsciously become wary and distrustful. They plant distrust and secretiveness, and they produce in us after their kind. No man can be treated frankly in this world unless he himself be frank. If we would win confidence to ourselves, we must put confidence in others. The soul is like a mirror, reflecting that ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... and into my private den. Not until the door closed behind her, and we were alone, did I see that she was not in her usual spirits. Then I saw that unmistakable quiver in her lips, so like a smile, so far from mirth, which my acquaintance with the girl, so sensitive and free from secretiveness, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... incognita. reticence; reserve; mental reserve, reservation; arriere pensee [Fr.], suppression, evasion, white lie, misprision; silence &c (taciturnity) 585; suppression of truth &c 544; underhand dealing; closeness, secretiveness &c adj.; mystery. latency &c 526; snake in the grass; secret &c 533; stowaway. V. conceal, hide, secrete, put out of sight; lock up, seal up, bottle up. encrypt, encode, cipher. cover, screen, cloak, veil, shroud; cover up one's tracks; screen from sight, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... rapid development of a thinking, plodding, evilbrewing mental composition—largely given to inventions of low cunning, schemes of mischief and deception, and false and mysterious pretensions. In his moral phrenology the professor might have marked the organ of secretiveness as very large, and that of conscientiousness omitted. He was, however, proverbially good natured, very rarely, if ever, indulging in any combative spirit toward any one, whatever might be the provocation, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... however, to study the hostile Indians that flocked to the village, any conclusive delineation of character, or any satisfactory analysis of their mental state in regard to the paleface religion, eluded him. Their passive, silent, sphinx-like secretiveness was baffling. Glickhican had taught him how to propitiate the friendly braves, and with these he was successful. Little he learned, however, from the unfriendly ones. When making gifts to these redmen he could never be certain that his offerings ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... felt that every word he uttered would go echoing in rolls and rolls of sound out among the multitude. They were not familiar enough to make that a matter of indifference to him. He was in the stage of secretiveness. And Emmy, after trying once or twice to open various small topics, had fallen back upon her own thoughts, and could invent nothing to talk about until the difficulties that lay between them had been removed. Her brow contracted. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... he was merry. So many thousand points of unlikeness might be named, all small: the Lord knows here are enough. The Angevin cat-and-dog nature was fairly divided between these two. Richard had the sufficiency of the cat, John the dependence of a dog; John had the cat's secretiveness, Richard the dog's dash. At heart John was ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... looking for them in the customary places on the outside, where he never puts them, and have not yet penetrated the interiors. As many of the fowls hide their eggs by a sort of intuitive prudery and secretiveness, Whitman always half hides, or more than half hides, his thought, his glow, his magnetism, his most ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... in the Texas Panhandle there was a limping marshal who felt regrets at mention of his name, and that farther north were other men who had a superstitious dread of undersized cow-men with spectacles. There were also stories of lonesome "run-ins," which, owing to Willie's secretiveness and the permanent silence of the other participants, never became more than intangible rumors. But he was a good ranchman, attended to his business, and the sheriff's office was remote, so ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... certainly did not take it if it did not suit him; and if it was not likely to suit him, he was in no hurry to ask for it. It was in his own fertile brain, not in the suggestions of others, that important measures had their birth. That trait in his character which phrenologists have named secretiveness largely governed his actions. It was natural for him to bring things about quietly and skillfully by setting others to do what he wanted done, without himself being seen, though sometimes there was no other motive than ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... Coleridge's references to himself in his later years are shrouded in a double obscurity. One veil is thrown over them by his deliberate preference for abstract and mystical forms of expression, and another perhaps by that kind of shameful secretiveness which grows upon all men who become the slaves of concealed indulgences, and which often displays itself on occasions when it has no real object to ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... of deception which were current among the trading class and which were accepted as shrewdness and were inseparably associated with legitimate business methods. In giving one of his captains instructions he wrote, as was his invariable policy, the most explicit directions to exercise secretiveness and cunning in his purchases of coffee at Batavia. Be cautious and prudent, was his admonition. Keep to yourself the intention of the voyage and the amount of specie that you have on board. To ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... purpose of freedom. The insurrections of Denmark Vesey in South Carolina, in 1822, and of Nat Turner, in Virginia, in 1831, show conclusively that the Negro slave possessed the courage, the cunning, the secretiveness and the intelligence to fight for his freedom. These two attempts were sufficiently broad and intelligent, when taken into consideration with the enforced ignorance of the slave, to prove the Negro even in his forlorn condition ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... as time went on, the story of the Varona treasure was forgotten, or at least put down as legendary. Only Isabel, who, in spite of her husband's secretiveness, learned much, and Pancho Cueto, who kept his own account of the annual income from the business, held the matter in serious remembrance. The overseer was a patient man; he watched with interest the growing ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... old quest, seeking in all directions for some less extortionate purveyor. But none was to be found. The selfishness and secretiveness of the drug slave made it difficult for her to learn on what terms others obtained Kazmah's precious goods; but although his prices undoubtedly varied, she was convinced that no one of all his clients was ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... be called a "self-made" man. He began his business life in Cleveland as a clerk at an extremely modest salary. Capacity for details and for shrewd bargaining, patience, frugality, seriousness, secretiveness, caution, an instinctive sense for business openings, self-control—all these were characteristic both of the Cleveland clerk and the later oil-refiner. In the bigger field he developed a daring caution, a quick understanding of the value of new inventions, a capacity for organization, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... Of his secretiveness for his wife's sake I had a touching little instance after luncheon. We had adjourned to have coffee in front of the hotel. The car was already in attendance, and Peggy had darted off to make her daily inspection of it. Pethel had ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... hours from speculation as to what, if not office business, took Maurice to Medfield. When she did begin to speculate she said to herself, "He doesn't tell me things about his business!" Then she was stabbed again by his annoyance because she had opened the letter from Mr. Houghton; then by his secretiveness in regard to that adventure on the river with Mrs. Morton. (He had told Edith!) Then this—then that—and by and by a tiny heap of nothings, that implied reserves. He wasn't confidential. She told him everything! She never ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the little low-roofed parlour of an old-fashioned farm-house, with a long clay pipe on the table at his elbow, and a veteran pointer at his feet, had already given audience to three distinguished members of the Feverel blood, who had come separately, according to their accustomed secretiveness, and with one object. In the morning it was Sir Austin himself. Shortly after his departure, arrived Austin Wentworth; close on his heels, Algernon, known about Lobourne as the Captain, popular wherever he was known. Farmer Blaize reclined ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... employed with Pierre and Paul. Much disposed as each feels to seek personal safety in charging guilt upon Dodge, neither knows what the other has divulged. Natural secretiveness and craft make each alertly suspicious. Neither Lanier suspects the other of double dealing as to interests of either. Both take refuge in ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... opposite me in the kitchen, talking, he would turn his head a little toward the clock or the stove and look at me from the side, but with frankness and good-nature. This trick did not suggest duplicity or secretiveness, but merely long habit, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... permanent opposition. He would not have admitted that he saw such a vision, for he was utterly loyal to his wife; but it was there. This unconfessed vision was one of several causes which had contributed to intensify his inherent tendency towards Machiavellianism and secretiveness. He said nothing to Constance, nothing to Cyril; but, happening to encounter Amy in the showroom, he was inspired to interrogate her sharply. The result was that they descended to the cellar together, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... tried to make Britt's reasons for the request seem convincing, could not help feeling that the financier's natural secretiveness in matters of personal business was stretched somewhat in this instance. But he gulped back any hesitation and offered to go on ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... concerned; and the impulsiveness and the reticence were both equally rooted in his poetic and human temperament. The one meant the vital force of his emotions, the other their sensibility. In a smaller or more prosaic nature they must have modified each other. But the partial secretiveness had also occasionally its conscious motives, some unselfish, and some self-regarding; and from this point of view it stood in marked apparent antagonism to the more expansive quality. He never, however, intentionally withheld from others such things as it concerned them to ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... if while he was in it the one idea at the back of his head was the anticipation of leaving it? Watch American business men together, and if you are a European you will clearly perceive that they are devotees. They are open with one another, as intimates are. Jealousy and secretiveness are much rarer among them than in Europe. They show off their respective organizations with pride and with candor. They admire one another enormously. Hear one of them say enthusiastically of another: "It was a great idea he had—connecting ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... may be reckoned the oath or promise of secrecy, exacted for no sufficient reason, and kept in defiance of common sense and common humanity. Lord Windermere's conduct in Oscar Wilde's play is a case in point, though he has not even an oath to excuse his insensate secretiveness. A still clearer instance is afforded by Clyde Fitch's play The Girl with the Green Eyes. In other respects a very able play, it is vitiated by the certainty that Austin ought to have, and would have, told the truth ten times over, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... well, and now that he is asleep through the hypnotic virtues of a best seller which I have read to him in large doses, I resume my correspondence with you, and, incidentally, my study of man. He is really very interesting, Aunt Jennie, with the tiniest bit of secretiveness as to his own purposes in life which, of course, makes one more curious about him. In a frock coat, with gardenia in his button hole, he would make an ideal usher at a fashionable wedding. A few ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... a Russian, to whom he had been introduced by Vola, and he was a character for fidelity and secretiveness. His name was Ulrich, and Barnwell had saved him from going to prison by paying a fine that he would never have been able to pay, and he at once became attached to his new master by all the ties that bind a lesser intellect and fortune to ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... matter, he had a peculiarity about which there could be no mistake. That was in the matter of music. So, after questioning the Professor about various indifferent points, moral and intellectual, such as reverence, combativeness, secretiveness, language, ideality, etc., I asked incidentally something also about tune and music. The answer was such as might be safely given in regard to ninety-nine out of every hundred persons—some vague, indefinite epithet that would apply to ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... of the austerity of Claude Frollo's life, pious people suspected him of magic. His silence and secretiveness encouraged this feeling. He was known to be at work in the long hours of the night in his cell in Notre Dame, and he wandered about ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... His secretiveness and his unpopularity point to one of the most important functions of the municipal and state "Bosses," to which as yet only incidental reference has been made. The "Boss" became the man who negotiated with the corporations, and through whom ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... his slow reply as he gave his head a nervous twitch to one side and blinked his eyes, "since I have given you my word never to conceal anything from you, you have no reason to suspect me of secretiveness. One cannot always be in exactly the same mood, and if I seem at all put out, that is all there is ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... with the steadfast ideas of every one had in time produced a timidity and secretiveness in the most ordinary actions, though where she believed herself to be directed by the Spirit, she had no lack of confidence and determination. If her movements could be kept secret she would do her utmost to make them so. She would send the reply ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... one of the finest military men of our century. The battle of "Five Forks" was, perhaps, the most ingeniously conceived and skilfully executed that we have ever had on this continent. It matches in secretiveness and shrewdness the cleverest efforts of Napoleon, and shows also much of that soldier's broadness of intellect and capacity ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... this next gully to talk it over, Buck," he suggested with an air of secretiveness that fired the Kid's imagination. "They started out to follow me, and I don't want 'em to see me ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... belong to the 'peers,' practise stealing from your boyhood up; and it is no disgrace but honourable rather to steal, except such things as the law forbids; and in order, I presume, to stimulate your sense of secretiveness, and to make you master thieves, it is lawful for you further to get a whipping if you are caught. Now then you have a fine opportunity of displaying your training. But take care we are not caught stealing over the mountain, or we shall catch it ourselves." ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... to except her mother and Thalassa, who accompanied the family everywhere. She loved her mother, but her love was embittered by her helplessness to mitigate her mother's unhappy lot. Thalassa was a savage old pagan whose habitual watchful secretiveness relaxed into roaring melody in his occasional cups; in neither aspect could he be considered a suitable companion for the budding mind of a girl, but he loomed in her thoughts as a figure of greater import than her father or mother. Her father was ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... when she received his offer of education. It was this mixture of fear and satisfaction that caused her alternate paling and flushing, yet this time it was the fear that came first. Perhaps she was becoming unduly sensitive. The secretiveness of her sex came to her aid here, and she awkwardly changed the subject. Aunt Vashti, complacently believing that her words had fallen on fruitful soil, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his dialect and his rudeness. What drew them to him was his self-respect; what annoyed them was his secretiveness; what they found odd about him was the fact that, try as they might to associate with him, he would disappear entirely from them for ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... forever eluded me, and forever led me on. The word fermenting aptly describes the process begun, suggesting as it does something closed up, away from air and sunlight, continually working in secret, engendering forces that fascinated, yet inspired me with fear. Undoubtedly this secretiveness of our elders was due to the pernicious dualism of their orthodox Christianity, in which love was carnal and therefore evil, and the flesh not the gracious soil of the spirit, but something to be deplored and condemned, exorcised ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Constance. Thus, too proud to speak—to hint a complaint, Constance was nevertheless perpetually wounded, and by degrees (although not loving her husband less) she taught that love to be more concealed. Oh, that accursed secretiveness in women, which makes them ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and frank honesty. When the thought is turned to an endeavor to secure a dollar that is not earned, there is secretiveness of purpose and inward guile. No person doing business on borrowed capital advertises the number and amount of his loans nor does he welcome inquiry by others. In a column of advertisements by money lenders in a newspaper lying on this table every one promises "privacy" or "no publicity." ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... condition of mutual secretiveness upon which she had married this man; it was antagonistic to her whole nature; she longed to repudiate it, and to abolish all secrets between them. But there her pride stepped in and closed her lips; and the intolerable thought that she would value her husband's confidence more ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... incognita. reticence; reserve; mental reserve, reservation; arriere pensee[Fr], suppression, evasion, white lie, misprision; silence &c. (taciturnity) 585; suppression of truth &c. 544; underhand dealing; closeness, secretiveness &c. adj.; mystery. latency &c. 526; snake in the grass; secret &c. 533; stowaway. V. conceal, hide, secrete, put out of sight; lock up, seal up, bottle up. encrypt, encode, cipher. cover, screen, cloak, veil, shroud; cover up one's tracks; screen ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... farther than secretiveness in its reaction from the large rhetorical forms of revolutionary Socialism. There arose even a repudiation of 'principles' of action, and a type of worker which proclaimed itself 'Opportunist-Socialist.' This conception of indifference to the forms of government, of accepting whatever governing ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... of preparation upon the hills of Twin Islands would return: the ill temper and cunning and evil secretiveness, joined now with the hang-dog air he habitually wore in the city. And these distressful appearances would by day and night increase, as we passed the Funks, came to Bonavist' Bay, left the Bacalieu light behind and rounded the Brandy Rocks, until, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... this, for it was going in for more hiding and secretiveness, but all the same it was fascinating, and, dropping on our knees in the short, wiry grass, we waited for our instructor in the art of ferreting rabbits ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... impelled by sheer restlessness; and during the day I listened eagerly to the talk of my customers in Yiddish—a language of which I was supposed to be entirely ignorant. But I learned nothing. Either the fugitives were unknown, or the natural secretiveness of an alien people forbade any reference to them, even among themselves; and meanwhile, as I have said, I tramped the streets nightly into the small hours of ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... acquisitiveness and secretiveness enough to stock an entire Board of Aldermen and a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... to Live. * Alimentiveness. 1. Destructiveness. 2. Amativeness. 3. Philoprogenitiveness. 4. Adhesiveness. 5. Inhabitiveness. 6. Combativeness. 7. Secretiveness. 8. Acquisitiveness. 9. Constructiveness. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... of the Council of Four and the mystery which enveloped its deliberations emphasized as nothing else could have done the secretiveness with which adjustments were being made and compromises were being effected. It directed attention also to the fact that the Four Great Powers had taken supreme control of settling the terms of peace, that they were primates among ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... forever—of studying the workings of the "peculiar institution" in its very home. The negros were of the lowest field-hand class, strong, dull, ox-like, but each having in our eyes an admixture of cunning and secretiveness that their masters pretended was not in them. Their demeanor toward us illustrated this. We were the objects of the most supreme interest to them, but when near us and in the presence of a white Rebel, this interest took the shape of stupid, open-eyed, open-mouthed wonder, something akin to ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... that this was the temple built by Zoroaster and preserved intact by that wonderful secretiveness of the Orient through the generations, by a cult who awaited the coming of Zoroaster's successor, of that Fire-Tongue who was to ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... round and the circle of light flashing over the ground, revealed to their searching eyes something vastly unexpected in such a place and yet which, after all, seemed to fit into a place where so much mystery and secretiveness was in the air. They themselves, disguised as such rough characters, fitted into the strange picture, which struck Cleek, even in spite of his many peculiar cases, as very much out of ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... to our antagonists to say, indeed it is a mere tu quoque to say, that the existing system does not present such a correlation, that it puts a premium on secretiveness and self-seeking and a discount on many most necessary forms of social service. That is a mere temporary argument for a delay ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... love—my last evening in Yorkshire. To-morrow I shall see my Sheldon, and inform him of the very strange termination which has come to my researches. Will he communicate at once with his brother? Will he release me from my oath of secrecy? There is nothing of the masonic secretiveness in my organisation, and I am very weary of the seal that has been set upon my unwary lips. Will Charlotte be told that she is the reverend intestate's next of kin? These are questions which I ask myself as I sit in the stillness of my room at the Magpie, scribbling this wretched ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... With the secretiveness that tyranny had taught her, Alice hid her treasure; and with the inborn honest pride which had, under Smith's dominion, cost her so much suffering, she swore to herself that they should go to Eustace ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that the young mountaineer stiffened a bit and that his face became mask-like. But this may have been the jealous tendency of a hopeless passion, and when Brent swiftly narrated all that he and Halloway had learned, the secretiveness of guise fell away from the listening face and the body trembled as if stricken with a chill, but a chill of rage and indignation which ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... themselves by saying that his face had a naturally melancholy cast—a sort of accident that had happened to him in the beginning! He had a considerable reputation, of which he was imperfectly aware, for secretiveness, timidity, gentleness, and intellectual superiority. Sundry young women thought of him wistfully when smiling upon quite other young men, and would even kiss him while kissing them, according to the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... before her masts and funnels became visible. He saw no soul except the solitary boatman of the little "plunger," who landed his weekly provisions at a small cove hard by. The boatman thought his secretiveness and reticence only the surliness of his nation, and cared little for a man who never asked for the news, and to whom he brought no letters. The long nights which wrapped the cabin in sea-fog, and at first seemed to heighten the exile's sense of security, by degrees, however, became monotonous, and ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... this conscientious information, Steve Brown looked in vain for any allusion to her secretiveness of the night before. In her bearing there was not the least vestige of arts and airs, nor any little intimation of mutual understanding; she simply looked up with wide-open eyes and told it to him. This honesty, quite as if she ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... invariably accepted as final." He occupied, in the words of the Report, "a position such as has probably never been held by any previous Secretary of State for War," though it cannot compare with the elder Pitt's in 1757-61. Oriental experience had not improved his qualifications for the post; secretiveness, testified the Secretary of the War Council, made him reluctant to communicate military information even to his colleagues on the Council; the General Staff sank into insignificance, and the regulations prescribing the duties of its Chief were treated as non-existent. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... no man in his employ, so what was a man doing in his house? There was no secretiveness about the stranger's movements; on the contrary, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... apart. The store was empty! Out in the open air, under the warm summons of the sun, there passed a merry, laughing group of negroes, happy, care-free, each humming the burden of some simple song, each slouching across the road, as though ease and the warm sun filled all his soul! Dissimulation and secretiveness, seeded in savagery, nourished in oppression, ingrained in the soul for generations, are part of a nature as opaque to the average Caucasian eye as is the ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... A little secretiveness has set many a scandal afloat; and much as is said about women who tell too much, they are a great deal better off than the woman who ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... my dear Edward, he began to exhibit a spirit of secretiveness and reserve entirely alien to his own open and honourable disposition, and also saw less of Mr. Gaskell. His friend tried, indeed, to win his confidence and affection in every way in his power; but in spite of this the rift between them widened insensibly, and my ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... But few people, in Great Britain at any rate, have the habit of frank expression, and when people do not seem to have made out any of these things for themselves there is a considerable element of secretiveness and inexpressiveness to be allowed for before we decide that they have not in some sort of fashion done so. Still, after all allowances have been made, there remains a vast amount of jerry-built and ready-made borrowed ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Cross had never ceased discovering his virtues. When he lived, one of the reproaches with which she constantly soured his existence was that of secretiveness. And Bertha, who knew something and suspected more of the truth in this matter, never felt it so hard to bear with her mother as when Mrs. Cross bestowed such ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... necessities, unless the tone and disposition, not of the best, but of the worst, of its members shall have become sensibly improved; for occasional unintentional leakage, by well-meaning officials possessing more information than native secretiveness, cannot be wholly obviated, and must be accepted, practically, as one of the inevitable difficulties ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... I said, a confession, but a very dear confession: I burn to tell it honestly, yet know not how. To withhold it from you would be to admit a secretiveness that our relationship has never known—out it must, and to you. I may, perhaps, borrow—who can limit the sharing powers of twin brothers like ourselves?—some of the skill your own work spills so prodigally, crumbs from ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... an engagement that must be of long duration is not a matter of etiquette but of personal preference. On the general principle that frankness is always better than secretiveness, the situation is usually cleared by announcing it. On the other hand, as illustrated above, the certain knowledge of two persons' absorption in each other always creates a marooned situation. When it is only supposed, but not known, that a man and girl particularly like each other, their segregation ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... socially, he yielded to her shrinking from the opportunities of social advancement that opened to them, and held aloof with her. This kept him a country person in his experiences much longer than he need have remained; and tended to that sort of defensive secretiveness which grew more and more upon him, and qualified his conduct in matters where there was no question of his knowledge of the polite world. It was not until after his wife's death, and until his daughters began to grow ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells |
